Heavy Lifting
by kelliejo19
Summary: "He loved her. Really loved her. The kind of love that takes you to depths of oceans, makes you lose all reason and forces you to become better in every sense of the word. He pressed his lips against Emma's forehead. He wanted to be better." A fanfic for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. This is Bull's story before he met Edward.


**Hi Fanfiction friends! Wow, it has been _forever_ since I have uploaded here! Life has been crazy since I started college and started looking for my first job! I wrote this after reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and I thought you might like to read it too. Enjoy! **

**\- KellieJo19**

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The lazy sun barely crept over the hill, shards of light cutting through blades of grass and soaking up the morning dew. Though the people of the countryside were still in their beds, Bull was not. He had been awake for hours, ripped away from sleep from the clanking of the metal hammer hitting the railroad tile. He sat on the sagging front porch of his weathered cottage if one could even call it that.

The wood was weathered and grey from unforgiving storms and there were places where he avoided stepping because he was sure the bowing wood would cave in. Inside the house, there was a modest bed, a stove that seemed to always need repairs, and a tiny dining room table with two misfit chairs. It was so small that he could stand on one side of the cottage, take ten generous steps, and find himself on the opposite side.

Bull sighed, and a small puff of air formed from his lips. There were sixty other houses just like his lined up in neat little columns and rows. No need for bells and whistles when you are just another railroad hire. He barely slept anyway, not when his boss kept Bull's crew laying railroad ties for sixteen hours straight for days at a time. The mirror hung beside the dining table showed deep bags beneath his eyes and a shadow of a beard he was too tired to shave, so he decided not to look into it when he left in the early morning. He wouldn't like what he saw anyway.

The screen door behind him opened, screaming in protest and Bull craned his neck towards the sound. In the frame of the door was his wife, Emma. She was bundled in his red wooly flannel, the sleeves rolled up multiple times just to fit and the hem of the shirt skimming her upper thigh. In her hand, she held two cups of coffee. She smiled at him and the sight of it warmed him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he answered.

They smiled at each other, Emma still in the doorway and Bull on the steps. Bull patted the spot next to him. She tiptoed across the porch, the loose floorboards squealing. As she sat, she handed him his cup and he mumbled a thank you before taking a sip.

"I didn't think you would be up yet," she said almost like a question, tucking a strand of honey brown hair behind her ear.

"I couldn't sleep," he admitted. As if on cue, the sound of the railroad ties being laid and hammers hitting metal bolts crashed through the air.

"Hmm." Emma peered at him from the lip of her mug. He avoided her gaze, staring off at the horizon that kissed the top of the hill nearly a mile away. Just below, the night crew was finishing their shift and it would soon be his turn. He didn't want to go. In fact, his whole life felt like that lately: not wanting to go but doing it anyway. It's how he ended up pulling his new bride out of her comfortable home in Boston, where they met, and how he dragged her to a middle of nowhere town in West Virginia where she couldn't even have the luxury of buying milk and cheese in the same day.

He looked at her. She was gazing at the apple tree by their cottage, wisps of her hair blowing across her face. She looked so lovely that he had to turn away, feeling the burning of guilt cut through him.

He felt her lay her hand tenderly on his knee.

"What are you going to do about the strike?" she whispered, almost afraid to give voice to this big and monstrous thing that had been eating him alive.

He shook his head. "I don't know."

All of the men in his crew had been whispering about a coo for weeks.

"Unfair wages," Tom, his partner, would say as he drove the hammer into the tie.

"Dangerous conditions," Tom's wife would cry over tea with her friends.

Bull's personal favorite was "Sixteen-hour work days for a couple of pennies is complete horseshit" simply because the man who would always say it was the ex-pastor living on the railroad.

He didn't care about any of that. He could deal with the sixteen hour days and the crappy pay and even the dangerous conditions so long as he was careful. But he wanted better. His wife deserved better.

"This wasn't the life I wanted for you, Emma," he sighed, surprised by how easily the words that had been weighing on his mind came out.

Emma took her hand off of Bull's knee and gently caressed his cheek. He finally looked up at her, the heaviness in his eyes so deep, so ingrained into who he was, that it pained her.

"I love you," she said fiercely, keeping her eyes locked on his. "I don't care if we live in a cardboard box I want to be with _you_."

When Emma looked at him, all she saw was the man that hummed her favorite song while he washed the dishes. She saw the man who pulled her up on their bed when they first moved into their cottage and jumped on the ratty mattress until they were both crying with laughter. She saw a man who was kind, gentle, and ferocious in his love for her. She wanted to shake him so hard until he believed in all the things she loved about him.

She laid her head on his shoulder, tightening her arm around his.

"I wish I could take away the pain away from you," she whispered gently. Her fingers grazed the palm of his hand, careful to avoid the gauze that hides the blisters that cover his hands. His gloves are too worn to wear but they can't afford new ones. They can't afford to eat most days let alone invest in gloves.

Bull gazed at his wife. He loved her. _Really_ loved her. The kind of love that takes you to depths of oceans, makes you lose all reason and forces you to become better in every sense of the word. He pressed his lips against Emma's forehead. He wanted to be better.

"My burdens are my burdens, Emma. I don't want you to worry about me."

"Your burdens are _our_ burdens," she corrected him. "That's marriage."

They sit in silence for a while. The hammer still pounded into the railroad ties at a steady pace and voices of sleepy people carried through the village of cookie cutter cottages as the world woke around them.

"I can carry you," Emma whispered, her voice full of the kind desperation and powerlessness that comes from not being able to help the ones you love. "Please let me carry you."

She didn't understand that he wanted to be the one doing the heavy lifting.


End file.
